


aftermath

by vampyrekat



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Angst, Gen, I literally hate myself for writing this, I want you all to read it so you can be upset with me for writing this, someone please come save Gleb from me he doesn't deserve this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 21:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14860544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampyrekat/pseuds/vampyrekat
Summary: The door is smaller than he remembers, which shouldn’t surprise him. He’s gotten taller since he left, although not by much - he had most of his height by the time he left, when he was fifteen and his father began to waste away. He wonders for a moment if his departure was one of the causes, and finds it is another thing he cannot blame the Romanovs for any longer.After the gunshots, there are silence. If there are no gunshots, what fills the hole they leave in the universe?Or: character musings on Gleb Vaganov, after he fails to kill the Grand Duchess Anastasia.





	aftermath

Gleb sits on a train, head against the seat back, and considers. He hasn't seen his mother since his last adventure with rivers and bodies and he misses her abruptly, fiercely. Russia is not called the motherland for nothing; that sort of bond does not evaporate overnight. He is pleased to be going home, pleased to have done his duty, and yet he wishes to see his mother. A simple wish, after everything. He assures himself it's natural to want to see her without a reason, and tries to ignore that he wants to see her to be held and comforted because he does not understand, after it all, and his father is not here to ask, and Gleb has no one else to turn to.

The door is smaller than he remembers, which shouldn’t surprise him. He’s gotten taller since he left, although not by much - he had most of his height by the time he left, when he was fifteen and his father began to waste away. He wonders for a moment if his departure was one of the causes, and finds it is another thing he cannot blame the Romanovs for any longer.

Gleb sits across from his mother - she is older than he remembers, but it has been years - and wonders that the word  _mother_  sits uneasy on his tongue.  _My son_  sits uneasily on hers, despite the fact she had welcomed him in and shoved tea into his hands. (He had forgotten, after all, that his mother had taught him to make tea and to offer it freely. He wishes he could forget that habit, now.) He manages to drink some and lets the bitterness pull the words, “You were right,” from him. She sips her tea as well and watches him for a moment.

"Mothers often are," she says finally, and he knows she is interrogating him now. He learned it from her more than anyone else. His father was a soldier; Gleb is a tool of the government.

"My father did not die accidentally," he says evenly, and notes his hand shaking, the ripples in the cup.

(Anya had done something similar, he recalls, and tries not to recall more.)

His father’s pistol had not left his side after that fateful summer night, and Gleb had not wondered why until it was too late to ask. When they laid his father to rest, there had been no body in the casket; the Neva had carried whatever fractured, shattered pieces had made up the man far away by then. Gleb had been long gone and had not cared to ask questions.

"It took you a decade to learn that much?" his mother asks incredulously, and Gleb blinks back the sudden wetness in his eyes. Ten years of running from his family and towards some ideal has lead him back here with nothing but the fierce ache in his heart and the yearning for something less, to return to how he was.

(Time, like water, cannot flow back.)

"I'm sorry," he gasps finally, and sets the teacup down.  "I'm sorry," he repeats, and she watches him with wide eyes. She knows what he's going through; his mother has watched it once before. "I've - I've made the same mistakes papa did. I don't - no, I  _do_  wish I could follow him; that would be easier. I understand now. I'm sorry." He wipes a hand over his eyes and takes a shaky breath, then almost laughs. "But that doesn't fix anything."

She watches him for a moment, then stands and opens her arms. Gleb goes to her and clings to his mother like he’s a child again, like there’s gunfire echoing through the house, like he’s fifteen and his ideals are suddenly tested against the brutality of his father’s gunshots. He has gotten taller or she has gotten shorter and his mother’s eyes are level with his chin, now, but he doesn’t care.

“At least I have my son back,” she whispers, and Gleb nods slowly, does not think about how temporary this will be, how the government will know what he did and he will be shot.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her hair, and his mother clutches him tighter.

They find him a week later, the men in a uniform that Gleb has not worn since he left Russia for Paris. It felt like a lie to put it on when he had left Anastasia standing there in her gown and her tiara and had done nothing. He waits for them to tell him he has failed, that they will bring him home to be shot for his troubles. He opens the door.

(They do not put the handcuffs that were meant for Anastasia on his wrists.)

They are smiling, his comrades, and there is vodka (his mother sniffs in disapproval but allows them in and gives them glasses) and there is celebration that, at last, the Romanovs are gone for good. Their new country can grow without their cancerous stranglehold, and Gleb is hugged and praised.

(They do not take him back to Leningrad, they do not force him. He is celebrated, not punished.)

"The Romanovs dead, and by Vaganov's hand, no less," one of his comrades - a pretty woman, Veronika - says, and holds her glass up. Her lover laughs and holds his up as well, adding, "As it should always have been!"

(They do not ask the questions that should have been asked, like where the body is or how the trigger felt.  He almost wants them to; he is not so good of a liar that they could have ignored his answers.)

Gleb toasts his mock victory and wonders that the burn of the vodka does not ease the ache in his heart, least of all when Veronika and her lover tangle their fingers together in the vodka-warmed celebration and smile at each other. They’re probably going to end up married, and something twists painfully in Gleb’s chest - the remnants of a dream he had discarded when he picked up the pistol.

(It was always foolish to dream, but he is a fool, and he had dreamed. It doesn’t matter now.)

“It takes time,” his mother tells him later, when the uniforms are gone again and he is helping her to clean the cups and dishes they have amassed. She finds reasons to keep him close, to delay his return to Leningrad, and so they send the medal they meant for him to her house instead and she lays it aside with his uniform and gun and Gleb is not healing, but he is living.

(And one often begets the other and time passes and he lives and he begins to forget.)

He can almost stop seeing ghosts in each flash of blonde hair, almost stops looking at the street sweepers. He goes back to Leningrad and wears the uniform and tells the story of killing the grand duchess, tells it so well it almost tastes like the truth. And time does begin to heal him. His heart will always lie in Paris, but he does not need that for his line of work. It is impossible to live in pain forever, and Gleb Vaganov, it seems, is going to live. 

(“Do you think history wanted you to have lived?”

“Yes -- why don’t  _you?_ ”)

He begins to forget and he allows himself to forget. There are plenty of women who are loyal, are dedicated and hardworking, and he eventually finds one who smiles - not so warm - and laughs - not so charming - and she is loyal. She is Russian, although she lacks the ever-Russian spirit he has only seen in a few people.

(“We are _both_ good and loyal Russians,” and she had spread her arms and he had not pulled the trigger, had not done his duty, and he had come back to Russia anyway.)

He doesn’t allow himself to remember. When they eventually marry - when it would be too curious not to, anymore - it is simple and Russian and Gleb tastes vodka on the back of his teeth when they kiss, burning through him, and he tries to tell himself it’s cleansing, that he will forget and he will move on. He tries to tell himself that it is enough and he is happy, because it must be enough.

(He is becoming more and more adept at lying, because he almost believes it himself.)

**Author's Note:**

> Digital brownies for those who catch all the parallels between him and Anya; I threw some in deliberately but I think some slipped in subconsciously. God, this hurt, but it was an interesting exercise in how Gleb survives what happens to him. Poor guy.
> 
> As ever, follow my tumblr for more updates and writing snippets at [vampyrekatwrites](http://vampyrekatwrites.tumblr.com/). If you want to see my more general fandom side, my Anastasia blog is at [nanasalt](http://nanasalt.tumblr.com/). Feel free to message me! It's what keeps me writing.


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